


what you are in the dark

by readythefanons



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Gen, back from the dead, came back wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 09:26:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4782251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/readythefanons/pseuds/readythefanons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Foggy arrives at Matt's apartment, but instead of finding Matt bleeding out in the Daredevil costume, he finds him dead in the Daredevil costume. Foggy can raise the dead--at the cost of another person's life--and he does. He brings Matt back and doesn't tell him that he died.</p><p>This is Matt's side of the equation.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>Matt can accept good things in his life, damnit. He’s making progress with Fisk, with the gangs, with repairing his relationship with Foggy. Good things are happening and he’s not going to sabotage himself.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	what you are in the dark

**Author's Note:**

> Slightly modified from the original, which can be found here: http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/4501.html?thread=8116373#cmt8116373

Foggy is different. He’s nervous around Matt, all the time. Not nervous like he’s afraid of Matt, but like he’s got a secret and he’s terrified Matt will figure it out.

He’s also weirdly attentive. Keeps asking Matt how he’s doing, if he’s feeling okay, whether he’d like to come over tonight. 

It’s a big improvement over furious and betrayed, though, so Matt just… lets it happen for a while. Reminds Foggy that he can take care of himself (“I have compelling evidence that this is not the case, Matt.”) and ducks the overtures of care that seem smothering while privately basking in the others. (Backrubs are never going to be a bad thing, Matt decides. Ditto being able to stop in at Foggy’s apartment when he’s done patrolling for the night.) 

The thing is, though, is that Matt feels _great._ It’s like he’s stronger, faster, has more energy. He thinks it’s because his best friend finally knows about his two biggest secrets, and Foggy _stayed._ (Matt ignores the fact that Foggy sometimes still looks at him with anxiety, pulse elevated and smelling of sweat. Matt ignores the fact that Foggy left that first night. Matt ignores it.)

\--

Foggy continues to hover. Oh, he continues to joke around with Karen and Matt, and he continues to try to charm Josie, and he continues to do all the normal things he does, but he also continues to hover.

He starts swallowing a lot around Matt. Sometimes he takes in a deep breath and just, like, breathes heavily for a minute. But he doesn’t say anything, and Matt doesn’t say anything. Foggy’s entitled to a few secrets at this point.

\--

Matt’s not getting hurt as often when he patrols. That’s good. It’s good. It’s not worrying at all. 

It’s a good thing, and Matt can accept good things in his life, damnit. He’s making progress with Fisk, with the gangs, with repairing his relationship with Foggy. Good things are happening and he’s not going to sabotage himself, okay?

Last night someone caught him across the ribs with a knife, except that they must have missed because there’s no cut on Matt’s ribs. There’s no line of pain, and all he feels when he runs his fingers over it is unbroken skin. So they must have missed. Who cares if his shirt has a slash in it. He’s fine.

\--

“Matt, is Foggy okay?” Karen asks. She’s slipped into Matt’s office and is standing by the door. It’s lunch time, and Foggy’s just stepped out with their sandwich orders.

“Is Foggy—why?” Matt asks. “Did he say something to you?” There’s a pause.

“No,” she says, “I’m probably just imagining things. He looks tired all the time, and. He looks tired all the time.”

“And?” Matt presses. If something’s wrong with Foggy, he has to know. Karen takes a deep breath.

“Sometimes he looks—sad. Really sad, Matt.” Her voice is thin, and fear washes through Matt like icy water. “But if he knows someone’s in the room he perks right back up.” 

“Sad how?” Matt asks. Karen sighs, just lets all the breath rush out of her body.

“Like he’s bracing himself for something.”

\--

Matt has—he has way, way too much energy. He can’t really write it off as a byproduct of relief any more. He’s doing a full day’s work every day and eight hours of patrol every night, but he feels fine. 

He tells himself he’ll ask Claire about it the next time he gets cut up.

He hasn’t seen Claire in weeks.

\--

Matt’s sense of smell starts to go. 

When he tells this to Foggy (which he can do because Foggy found out his secrets and came back) Foggy’s heartrate skyrockets. 

“It’s—how do you mean?” Foggy asks. His voice is high and pinched. (Matt shouldn’t have told him, should have kept it close to his chest, would never have told him if Foggy wasn’t serious about not being lied to.)

“I can’t smell as much as I used to,” Matt say. “Everything’s just less.”

“Could it be a cold?” Foggy asks. Matt shakes his head. Foggy is—nervous? Something like nervous. And he’s trying to hide it. “Well, let me know if it changes either way,” he says. Then he says, “Hey, maybe it’s a good thing. You don’t need to smell the city’s dirty socks anymore.” It’s the weakest joke Matt’s heard in a good long while, but Foggy joking is normal. Matt latches onto it.

\--

Matt tries burning off his too-much energy at the gym, punching and punching _and punching punching punching punching._

He breaks the bag right off its chain. He’s barely sweating.

\--

He could’ve sworn he saw red for a moment, which, just—

Matt doesn’t see. The “world on fire” is an analogy or whatever to make it easier for people (Claire, Foggy) to understand how the human brain can rewire itself to compensate for absent stimulus and integrate that which is novel. He doesn’t _see._

But for a second there, he could’ve sworn he saw red.

\--

Karen is increasingly worried about Foggy, Matt can tell. She brings in breakfast more often, and at one point she brought in a potted plant. “To cheer the place up,” in her words. 

Once, when Matt is returning to the office, he hears the tail end of a conversation between them.

“What? No, no, nothing like that!” says Foggy.

“Oh. Oh thank god.” Karen sounds like she’s been—not crying, but actively avoiding crying.

“No, Karen, I’m fine,” Foggy says. Lub-DUB says his heart. Lie. “My health is fine.” Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Truth. “You know I’d tell you anything like that, right?” Lub-DUB says Foggy’s heart, but Matt ignores it. He already knows what Foggy is lying to Karen about.

\--

Matt doesn’t get thirsty any more. He only gets hungry every couple of days. He can still get drunk.

\--

Not long after, there’s The Smell.

It’s objectively terrible. It’s rotting fruit and mold and decay. It makes Matt gag when he wakes up and smells it.

It’s him. It’s Matt. The smell is coming from _Matt._

He asks Foggy if he can smell it. (Foggy’s nose pressed against Matt’s hair. Matt was not prepared for how much he likes Foggy’s nose in his hair.)

“I don’t smell anything, Matty. What’s it smell like?” Foggy says.

“Nothing,” Matt lies. “It’s nothing.” It’s probably nothing.

\--

It’s not nothing. The smell keeps getting stronger until Foggy and Karen can smell it. He can sense their revulsion even as his own sense of smell dwindles.

He visits Claire again. She thinks he’s let something get infected. It smells like part of him is rotting, putrefying. He hasn’t, he assures her, he isn’t. She demands to check for herself.

She’s shaky when she assures herself that no, he doesn’t have actual maggots in his body anywhere. She hugs him—she hasn’t done that in a while. She feels nice: warm, strong, and comfortingly alive. 

\--

Matt reasons, if he has the energy to patrol all night and pursue legal channels of justice by day, why shouldn’t he? 

He’s hearing alarm clocks when he realizes that it’s morning, people are waking up. He’s two blocks away from his building and has no idea how he let the time slip away from him. He makes it to his apartment and realizes he has a deep cut across his chest and his knuckles are bruised. 

Beating the punching bag off its chain didn’t bruise his hands. How— 

\--

Matt goes back to Claire. The smell is still there. She won’t say if it’s worse, but he can tell from her non-answer.

The cut across his chest is very deep. Matt didn’t realize how deep because it’s bleeding very little. Claire is very, very afraid and trying not to show it. Matt doesn’t know if she’s afraid for him or of him, and he doesn’t ask. He doesn’t want to know.

\--

Matt keeps seeing flashes of red throughout the day. (How?) He ignores it. Foggy and Karen invite him out to Josie’s and he accepts. Their hearts are fluttering so fast. They’re afraid, but he doesn’t know what of. (He suspects.)

They calm down over the next couple of hours, though. Karen gets sloppy-drunk, hanging on Matt and Foggy and telling them over and over how much she loves them, how much they mean to her, how much she owes them. She starts to get choked up over her own sentimentality, but Foggy saves the night, cracks some truly terrible joke that makes her snort and punch him in the shoulder and demand another drink. They see her into a cab, and then it’s time for Foggy to go. He claps Matt on the shoulder, pulls him into a hug (holding his breath. The smell.), and bids him good night.

\--

Matt goes on patrol again that night. He didn’t mean to, but—

He’s on patrol, that’s what matters. Below him, a man is explaining that if another man hands over his wallet, no one has to get hurt.

Matt drops on the would-be mugger, and the almost-victim flees. The mugger’s got a knife, but Matt’s got his two good hands. He’s punching from the left, and the right, and the left again. He’s punching and punching and punching _punching punching—_

Matt’s hands are red. He looks at the—the man. The mugger. He’s—air currents and scent (barely there) and heat (fading). His hands are red, too. As bright as Matt’s. 

Matt flees.

\--

He checks people’s hands on his way to work, trying not to look too much like he’s fucking staring. (He’s a blind man walking through a world on fire and now also hands?) Most people’s hands aren’t red. They’re not anything, really. He can just see the outlines of their hands, and no color. (It’s not gray, but if he had to describe it to someone he could probably go with gray.) There are some people—more than he expected—whose hands are red, too. The color ranges from barely-there pink to orange-red to the deep, bright red on Matt’s own hands. Very few people have hands that match Matt’s.

\--

He can hear Foggy’s heartbeat a block away. He can hear Karen’s at half that. 

Foggy is very, very afraid.

\--

When Matt (finally) arrives at the office, Foggy hauls him bodily inside the door. He closes the door and locks it. 

_“What did you do, Matt?”_ he hisses. He sounds—horrified, shocky, frightened. Pick one. Pick any. Karen is in the corner of the room, breathing rapid, standing still as a rabbit in front of a dog. She’s got her hands over her mouth. They’re red as a poppy. 

“What did I?” Matt tries to ask. Foggy drags him into his office, closes the door, locks it. He spins around, and grabs Matt by the shoulders. (Red, red as blood, Matt notes distantly. Like his own.) 

“Last night,” Foggy says in a voice barely louder than a breath. “The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen was caught, by a security camera, _beating a man to death._ ”

“No, no. No no no no.” Matt’s not aware that he’s saying anything. Everything is the smell—putrid, how can Foggy stand to be so close?—and then he’s back. Foggy’s hugging him, crying. It takes Matt a moment to figure out what Foggy’s saying. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Foggy says. Over and over. 

Matt doesn’t—he doesn’t—

He doesn’t understand—


End file.
